Being Sloane Jacobs (8 page)

I pull away. “Never. It’s a badge of honor. I took a puck to the face freshman year.” I smile proudly and then tilt my head up so she can get a better view of the corresponding bump. “Bled like a fountain, but they had to drag me off the ice kicking and screaming. I still have the jersey in my closet. It looks like an autopsy. Beat that.”

“Okay, how about this?” She stands up and drops her pants. I cover my face with my hands.

“Whoa, whoa, princess! I’m not into that!”

She slaps my hand away from my face and says, “Look.”

On the side of her right thigh, just below her hip, is a blooming black and purple bruise so large I couldn’t cover it with one hand. As it spreads out around her leg, it starts to turn red and blue, with a nasty red scrape slashing through the middle.

“Bar fight?” I ask.

“Triple lutz,” she says. She takes my hand and rubs it over the bruise. “Can you feel that?”

The skin is hard, taut, and swollen, like her leg swallowed a softball. “Gross,” I say, and jerk my hand away. “What, are you going to hatch baby spiders out of that thing?”

“Ew! Now that image is going to be with me forever!” She pulls up her pants and flops back down on the bed, but this time I notice she lands favoring her left side. “That is a hematoma. I’ve landed on my butt so hard so many times in that exact place, trying to get my triple back, that my leg has moved past a simple bruise and has started to collect blood and scar tissue underneath my skin. Cute, huh? That’s going to look great in a bathing suit.”

“Will it go away?”

“Yeah, once I stop biting it on the ice and jump like I used to,” she mutters. She runs her hand absentmindedly over the bruise, now hidden by her sweats. Her brow
furrows and her mouth moves ever so slightly, like she’s giving a silent “I’m disappointed in you” speech to an invisible friend. I study her for a moment. She catches me staring and I quickly look away.

“Okay, okay. Listen to this.” I lean my face in close to her ear. I open my mouth wide, then close it, open and close, like a fish gasping for breath, but the only sound is the cracking in my jaw. I don’t know what it sounds like to her, but inside my head it’s like someone’s snapping No. 2 pencils in half over a firecracker.

“Ew, what’s that from?”

“Seventh grade, middle school regionals, I took a shoulder right to the jaw. Dislocated, then wired shut for two weeks. Didn’t break, but it’s clicked like that ever since.”

“Well, if you want to talk chronic injuries, how about this?” She throws her right leg onto my lap, peels off her sock, and then waggles her foot in front of my eyeballs. On the ball of her foot, just above her arch, is some kind of big, hard, scaly growth the size of a bouncy ball, one of the ones that cost
two
quarters, not one. I swat her foot away from my face.

“What in the hell is that thing?”

“That’s my creature,” she says with a wicked smile. “I think at this point it’s a blister under a callous under a scar. I’ve had it pretty much my entire skating life. That’s with me until I retire, my friend, and maybe even longer than that. Try strutting around in strappy platform sandals with that on your foot.”

“That’s worse than my grandma’s bunions. You’re gross. Have you named that thing?”

“Maybe I’ll call it Devon.” She giggles. “So do I win?”

“I’d say it’s a draw. And you’re still going to have to learn to take a hit if you want to last a day in my skates. I play full-contact figure skating, dude.”

“Yeah, and you’re padded up like a crash-test dummy. All that’s separating me from injury is a pair of suntan tights and some rhinestoned Lycra. P.S.? Landing on a rhinestone is freaking painful.”

“Hey, how do we handle the parentals?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if your dad calls or something, what do I say? What do you call him? I mean, if anyone’s going to be able to bust us, it’s our parents.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” she says. Her face wrinkles into a frown. “I highly doubt my father will be calling.”

Her tone tells me that this conversation is over. I guess if she’s wrong, I’ll just dodge the calls.

“Well, if
my
dad calls,” I say, “just grunt about your knee and agree with whatever he says about the Phillies. And
don’t
call him Pops.”

“Uh, yeah,” she says, looking at me sideways. “Not a problem.”

“So …” I stare at her. A combination of excitement and nerves is bubbling in my chest. “Are we really doing this, then?”

She raises an eyebrow at me that is more of a challenge than any words she could have come back with. She may be prim and pretty, with a suitcase full of spandex and gold blades on her skates, but something about
this
Sloane means business in a way I’m not even sure I’m prepared for.

But I’m also not prepared for hockey camp, so at this point, I’ll follow Sloane into the dark.

The next morning I wake up in a pile of wrappers and crumbs. My mouth tastes like a three-day-old carnival. Through my sleepy haze I spot a half-empty Coke on the bedside table and reach for it. I take a swig, ignoring the syrupy flat flavor. At least it’s better than the fiesta of potato chips and chocolate that’s hanging out in my mouth.
Must. Find. Toothbrush
.

“Good morning, Sloane Devon, you ready to go glam?” Sloane Emily’s voice echoes through the room from her position in the middle of the floor; she’s wearing a hot-pink crop top and black stretchy pants, and is contorted into a pretzel on a hot-pink yoga mat.

I fling the comforter over my head and mumble, “How in the world are you awake right now?”

“Force of habit,” she says, though her voice sounds strange, and when I peek out from under the covers, I see it’s because she’s on her stomach, her arms grabbing her legs over and behind her so that her body makes a circle. Just looking at it makes my stomach churn. “Years and
years of five a.m. ice time sort of screws with your internal clock. You’ll learn.”

“Dear God, I’ve made a huge mistake.” Coach Butler only runs Saturday morning practices as punishment if we’re goofing off, and even then those usually don’t start until nine a.m.

“Get up, sleepyhead!” she says, leaping up and bounding over to the bed. “You need to get showered and get Sloane Emily–fied. You can’t wear that hoodie to figure skating camp. The jig will be up before you even walk through the door. I laid out some clothes for you and grouped the rest of my things in my suitcase by outfit to help you. Oh, and I took the liberty of swapping out our underwear, because while wearing your jeans is fine, wearing your skivvies is, well, skeevy.”

“You’re talking too much,” I reply, burrowing further under the covers. I regret having given her the key to my room. “And too fast. One-word sentences until after I’ve had some coffee.”

“Get up!” she cries, flinging the comforter off the bed.
She’s just like Mom
. As soon as I think it, I feel a sharp pain in my gut that’s enough to rouse me out of bed. I shoot Sloane a look, then shuffle off toward the shower. “I’ll order some breakfast from downstairs. Eggs or pancakes?”

“Both,” I say. I’m going to need some serious grease in my stomach to get through this.

Two hours, two fried eggs, four strips of bacon, a pile of home fries, and a short stack of pancakes later, and I’m
wearing an outfit that would make my hockey team pee their pants laughing.

“Are you sure about this? I mean, no one there knows you, right? It’s been three years since you competed. I could wear whatever I want.”

“No one is going to believe for one hot second that I would wear
anything
in your suitcase, whether they know me or not.” Sloane Emily winds a gauzy lavender scarf loosely around my neck, then steps back to give me room to check it out in the full-length mirror. I’m wearing black capri leggings (an item of clothing I didn’t even know existed) underneath a gauzy gray miniskirt, topped with a cream-colored silk camisole. And when I complained about feeling naked, Sloane Emily gave me the “scarf,” which appears to have the consistency and color of cotton candy and does nearly nothing to hide my chest, which is attempting to make a break for it.

“Okay, so you’re a little chestier than I am, but that’s not a big deal,” she says, adjusting the scarf slightly over my boobs. “Once you’re on the ice you’ll be able to wear your own sports bras.”

“You are definitely getting the good end of this deal,” I say. Next to me, she’s wearing my favorite pair of black Bermuda shorts with a white T-shirt and my yellow Jefferson High zip hoodie on top.

“Please, I look like a juvenile delinquent. The only thing this ensemble is missing is a can of spray paint,” she says. “And wait until you see where you’re staying. I’m pretty
sure it’s going to be nicer than the dorms at the University of Montreal. I mean, you’ll probably have your own room. Now hurry up.” She grins at me. “Your car is waiting downstairs.”

François must have the morning off, which is a good thing just in case he’s as observant as he is accommodating. He’d definitely notice something weird about Sloane Emily struggling under the weight of my gear bag while I stroll through the lobby with one rolling suitcase and a tiny (compared to my own) skate bag.

Sloane Emily was right: My car is waiting for me. Only it’s not just a car. It’s a limousine. I nearly drop her—I mean
my—
skates.

“Nice doing business with you, Sloane Jacobs,” Sloane Emily says. She nods her head toward the limo to confirm that it is, in fact, for me. Why she’d turn this down in exchange for a city bus to a university dorm is beyond me. That girl must have something else going on. Whatever it is, I don’t want to know about it. I’m happy doing her a favor by taking all this luxury off her hands.

“You too, Sloane Jacobs,” I reply. We shake hands in that hokey, too-hard kind of way that looks like we’re starring in a remake of
West Side Story
and negotiating a truce, not executing a plan that could get us thrown out of the country and grounded for the rest of our natural lives. But it’s too late to back out now.

A chauffeur in a suit and jaunty little black hat hurries out of the driver’s seat and around to the back door. He
opens it, then steps aside and does that “This way,
mademoiselle
” gesture I’ve only ever seen in the movies. Only this is real, and it’s for
me
. I’m
that
Sloane Jacobs now. I give Sloane Emily one last wave, then climb into the car and end up bear-walking across the leather seat. By the time I’ve gotten settled, she’s already heaved my hockey bag onto her shoulder and is making her way toward the bus stop.

Despite all our scheming, our pep talks, and one hard slap to the face, I’m not sure she’ll last even one day in my shoes. I’m not sure I’ll last that long in hers, either.

CHAPTER 7

SLOANE EMILY

A bus, dirty with road grit, pulls up and shudders to a stop. I climb aboard behind a tiny old lady dragging some kind of wire cart filled with cans of tomatoes. She taps her ratty old wallet on the fare box, then shuffles down the aisle. I drop in the two coins I’ve been clutching since Sloane counted out the bus fare for me this morning, then glance at the driver to see if there’s anything else I’m supposed to do. He just scowls at me. I take that to mean I’m good to go. I grab a seat toward the front of the bus next to a tired-looking middle-aged woman in a rumpled business suit. She sniffs a couple of times, then gives me a dirty look and moves to a seat on the aisle. I don’t blame her. Sloane Devon’s hockey bag smells like sweat socks that have been marinated in pickle juice, then sun-dried in a swamp.

An old man starts to make his way down the aisle, then stops and stares at me long and hard. For a moment I think
he’s going to point a long, thin finger at me and shriek, “Imposter!” But then I see him look down at the seat next to me, where I’ve set one of my bags.

“Oh, sorry,” I say, and pull the tote into my lap. I readjust, crossing my ankles and sitting up straight like I’ve been taught. I gaze around the bus to check out my fellow passengers. Across the aisle, a guy in a ball cap is fast asleep, leaning against the window, his mouth wide open. A few seats back, a teenage boy slouches down low in his seat, legs splayed out into the aisle. A woman in front of me has her head in her lap, her long brown hair cascading down around her knees.

I can’t remember the last time I was on a bus, other than for a school function. It’s exactly as gross as I’d always imagined.

With each bump down the street, I relax a bit. I lean back against the seat. I uncross my ankles and position my feet on the floor in a wide stance, letting my knees fall apart a little to make room for the tote. I can practically hear my mother hissing in my ear: “Sloane Emily Jacobs, sit up straight!”

But she’s not here. I’m on a public bus in Montreal, on my way to play hockey for four weeks. I can sit however I want, and no one is going to tell me otherwise.

This is going to be the greatest summer ever.

Four stops later, the bus doors spring open and a tall boy who looks to be the human embodiment of a sheepdog gets on. His walk is confident, and he’s smiling, as though
mounting a cramped and smelly bus is the best thing to happen to him all week. He’s got shaggy chestnut hair that, with some styling product and half an hour with a blow-dryer, could be sculpted into a decent-looking Bieber. It appears he’s more in favor of the effortless-dude style that involves a hand towel and a stiff wind.